


My Heart Will be Waiting

by JesBelle



Category: Original Work
Genre: Bisexual Characters, F/M, Fantasy, Magic, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-04
Updated: 2019-04-04
Packaged: 2020-01-04 14:01:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18345128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JesBelle/pseuds/JesBelle
Summary: A knight, a witch, a little magic.





	My Heart Will be Waiting

**Author's Note:**

> Originally, this story was part of [_Mary Sue Saves the Galaxy_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17740163/chapters/41854640). In the end though, I decided it wasn't necessary to that narrative to include this one. On the other hand, I'd written the damn thing, you know? I might as well post it.

“I made it,” she says, “to bind your heart to the heart of your love.”

It’s an odd thing, he thinks, turning the plaited bracelet this way and that, watching it catch the firelight. It appears to be woven of random odds and ends — bits of yarn, dried grass, human hair, straw, a scrap of midnight blue silk. And other things that he can’t identify.

The effect is haphazard but oddly pleasing nevertheless. He tugs it and twists it. It is strong and flexible.

The witch stands by her fire and watches him as he examines the object, her expression unreadable.

“I have no love,” says the knight. “I have no liege, no master, no servant, and my horse is my only companion.”

“Three nights ago, you came here looking for a quest. You didn’t go to the king, so you must not seek gold. You didn’t go to the church, so you must not seek fame. Instead, you came here. You must have known I have nothing to offer but love.”

“Truthfully,” says the knight, “when the tavern keeper said that you granted men love, I thought perhaps he meant...”

She raises her eyebrow.

“…something else, but he set me right.”

She laughs. “You wouldn’t be the first to think it, and I would grant the same to a lady if she were willing.”

“What are your terms then? What must I do? And what, exactly, is my reward?”

She nods at him and smiles. “Smart. You wish to know what the catch must be.”

“There’s always a catch,” he points out. “Kings are not fond of parting with their gold and the church doesn’t like to share its glory.”

“Ah, but what I offer is not finite. There is enough if you know how to see it.”

“Then I am long overdue my portion. Tell me the terms.”

“Very well,” she says. “You must wear the charm around your left wrist for a year and a day. During that year, you must serve me every Seconday from sundown until midnight. At the end, you will find a love for your life — an affectionate partner, a helpmeet, and your soul’s truest companion. It will be a happy love, and it will prosper until the end of your lives together, which will be no longer or shorter a time than it would have been otherwise.”

“That’s all?” he asks. “I have to wear this and serve you once a week for a year? And in return I will have this treasure, this soulmate?”

“It is as simple as that,” she assures him. “And yet, most who come here choose to not complete their service.”

“And the penalty for that?” he asks.

“There is none,” she says. “They go on to have lives no worse than than the lives they had when they first came to my door — except, of course, for the knowledge that they could have had so much more.”

“Then I will do it,” he says.

She looks at him — stares into his eyes. He is sure that she can read something there that he would rather were left hidden. But then again, perhaps not.

She merely smiles slightly and says, “Place the charm around your left wrist and say, ‘I accept.’”

He fumbles with the bracelet for a few moments, but finally gets it wrapped around his wrist, and holding it in place, he says, “I accept.” The bracelet secures itself. He can no longer see where it begins or ends.

He pledges himself for one year to the local lord so that he may have food and shelter for himself and his beast.

The tasks she sets each week are puzzling to the knight. Some are what one expects from a magical quest — feats of strength and stamina and courage. She sends him to challenge a man who gave her insult in the market. She has him lift a neighbor’s half-grown calf from some sucking mud.

She gives him piles of seeds to sort, which is a typical task in these types of affairs, but one more typically given to women.

Some of the tasks are quite mundane — milking the ewe, or feeding the chickens. She has him perform every kind of domestic chore, from dressing a pheasant to washing the dishes. He makes the bed, sweeps the floor, washes the linens. When it’s time, he shears the ewe.

He helps her with her craft as well. He makes lavender bundles — nine stems to a bundle, wrapped three times in green string and hung, three bundles to a nail, from the beams to dry. He does much the same with other herbs — some he recognizes from her garden, some from the local woods and fields, some that are utterly strange to him.

By the light of a full moon, he repairs the worn thatching on the roof. He ropes her bed and makes her a new chair. He helps her cover the beehives.

When he has worked for her through the summer and autumn, he says to her, “You have been testing me — my strength and my courage, my patience and determination.”

She nods at him. “You forgot to mention your ability to learn and your forbearance. I have set before you unfamiliar tasks and tasks that many men would consider beneath their dignity.”

“And have I passed your test?” he asks.

“Most abandon their quest well before this point,” she replies.

His work does not end with the coming of winter, but now they work together more often than not.

They brew sour beer in the warmth of the attic. They make tincture of rosemary, maidenhair, and sage.

They make candles of beeswax scented with the essences of herbs and flowers — wonderful scents that he can’t identify but that bring to mind scenes from his past. He remembers laying his hot, sweaty body down in the shade of a tree after hay-cutting. He remembers picking berries with his mother when he was barely old enough to walk after her. He remembers the scent of horses and leather on the day his father first took him to the stables. He remembers choosing his first hound from a litter of pups at his neighbor’s house. He remembers his first sexual encounter — a rushed and surreptitious mutual tug in an empty tack room. Afterwards, the other squire had kissed him with surprising gentleness, and that was also his first kiss.

For some reason, he finds himself telling the witch all of these stories.

And in the quiet of the night, listening to hers.

She tells him of learning her craft from her mother and her mother’s mother — following them over the countryside as they showed her what grew where and in which season. Showing her how to harvest the plants — which to cut with her little knife, which to pinch between her finger and thumbnail, which to dig up whole with a sharpened stick. They teach her to never take all.

“And your first kiss?” he asks as they sit on the bench outside her door and watch the fireflies dance in the garden.

“A local lad. He saw me go to the witches’ graveyard on Elevenmonth’s Eve to leave a wreath on my grandmother’s grave and to take a handful of the dirt for my craft. He followed me and, as I was leaving, he told me he wished to make me his own. I said I had no interest in a husband. He said he was not offering to make me his wife. I said no and turned to leave. He grabbed me and pushed me against one of the great oaks that grew there. He took what I would not give, and he would have taken more — already he was lifting my skirt. I threw the handful of dirt in his face, and ran. Dirt from an ancestor’s grave is powerful magic. His face was scarred forever after.”

“And your real first kiss?”

“My friend and her sweetheart. They wished to conceive so that they could marry despite her father being against it. It’s said that if a couple takes a witch to their bed and pleasures her well, they will be guaranteed a child. It’s said that we have great magic between our thighs. I don’t know if that’s true, but she did catch.”

“I have heard of such magic,” he says. “That a knight, even one near to death, may be healed of every wound if a witch will lie with him.”

“I have heard that tale as well, although I don’t know how one so near death would manage bedding someone.”

Early in the spring, the ewe gives birth to twin lambs. By lamplight, the knight clears the mucus from their eyes and mouths. The first breathes right away. The witch encourages the other by tickling its nostril with an oat straw.

They sit in the sheep shed and watch the lambs’ tails wag as they receive their first meal.

“You make a pretty decent midwife,” she says.

“I think that’s the ewe’s doing,” he says.

“But you’ve attended birthings before.”

“Horses. They have a much tougher go of it than sheep. And if a mare has twins, they almost always die.”

“It happens sometimes with sheep too. The mothers don’t want to care for two, but this one has never had a problem with it.”

They watch the lambs for awhile longer.

“How did you make this?” he asks, touching the bracelet. “It’s more than just herb magic.”

She glances at the charm. “It is deep magic,” she confirms. “I took what you gave me — a lock of your hair, a drop of blood from your third finger — and I used them to do a summoning. Everything in the charm is something touched by the one whose heart fits yours best. It is someone with whom you can love and grow old, someone who seeks as you seek. The charm calls to that person.”

“Could it change?” he asks. “The charm, I mean. Sometimes I think that I see a color or a fiber that wasn’t there before.”

She takes his hand and pulls it close. She twists it this way and that, examining the charm in the lamplight. She holds her other hand above the charm, and he can feel an energy emanating from it.

She shakes her head. “I see no darkness, or no more than most people carry with them. Deep magic is always in flux until the spell is complete.” She drops his hand. “Now that I think on it, it’s in the last month of the spell when those who were not afraid of effort and humility begin to change their minds. Few of them tell me a reason, and I suspect even fewer speak the truth. I had one woman come to me in the middle of the night, a week before her year was ended, begging me to remove the charm. Her hand was a bloody mess where she had tried to remove it herself.”

“What did you do?”

“I removed it of course. I’m not here to make folks do what they haven’t the will for. I put a salve on her hand and bandaged it for her.”

“And what happened?”

“All I know is that she married and is a fine lady. I saw her on the High Street, stepping out of her sedan, about five years later. She looked at me and said, ‘I should have kept it on.’” The witch looks at him. “It is your choice, of course. I can only say that no one who persisted until the end has told me that they regretted it, and many who didn’t go through with it, have.”

“Have you ever used the spell on yourself?” he asks.

“I can’t set it on myself nor any other who possesses craft, either by nature or study,” she tells him.

“But if you could, or if someone could do it for you, would you?”

“Yes,” she says.

He wonders who it is, this fine lady. There can’t be many such women — the town isn’t that large — and all of them must pass through the Hall of the local lord sooner or later.

It is during the celebration of the Spring Equinox that he sees her. The day is rainy and muddy. The guests must strip off their outdoor things — boots, gloves, cloaks — and put on their indoor things before entering the Hall. He sees her scarred hand as she pulls on her slippers before she donning a pair of lacework mitts.

He watches her take the arm of a man at least thirty years her senior.

He contrives to speak to her through the simple expedient of asking her if she dropped a handkerchief that was, in actuality, his own. He holds it out to her, allowing the cuff of his garment to fall back, revealing the strange bracelet.

“It isn’t mine.” She is unable to take her eyes from the charm.

“My apologies for bothering you, my lady,” he says, letting his sleeve once again cover his wrist.

“It was no bother, sir knight.” She stares a moment longer at the cuff before looking him in the eye. “Do you know who it is yet?” she asks.

For a moment, he thinks she is speaking of the handkerchief. Then he realizes that she speaks of the person who will answer the charm’s call.

“No, my lady. I had not thought to seek the answer to that question.”

“I wish that I had been as wise as you,” she says, and she turns from him and leaves.

“Do people usually try to figure out who the spell has chosen for them?” he asks the witch when he sees her the next evening.

“Some do,” she says. They are whitewashing the inside of her dwelling. “Some just find out by accident. Very few are surprised when the moment comes.”

“Do you think that some back out of the agreement because they discover who the charm means for them and they don’t want to be with that person?”

She stops and looks at him, looks into his eyes in a way that she hasn’t since the beginning. He notes that it is not as disconcerting an experience now as it was on the day that he entered into their bargain.

What does it matter if she sees something in his soul? He has already spoken more of what is there to her than to any other living creature except, perhaps, his horse.

“Do you think you know who the charm means for you?” she asks.

“No,” he replies. “I haven’t even thought of it until lately. I had thought of the pleasures of sharing my bed, of having a companion who understands my words, who will laugh with me, who will hear me and talk to me. I’ve thought of the comfort of having someone whom I can care for, who will seek to lighten my burdens, who will allow me to help them when they’re in need. What does it say about me that I care not who that person is?”

“It seems to me that you care very deeply,” she says. “Perhaps you simply don’t care who they are to the rest of the world.”

When he comes to her on the last night of his service, she has him help plant seedlings — rosemary, chervil, and thyme.

“Come tomorrow,” she says, “at sunset.”

“I have a question,” he says.

“Ask, then.”

“What if the person I meet here tomorrow doesn’t want me?”

“They already love you.”

“An enchanted love?” he says, alarmed. “I don’t want—”

“No,” she says, “nothing like that. I can’t say more, but perhaps a time will come when I can explain it to you. Or perhaps you may figure it out for yourself.”

For the first time, he begins to consider who he might find at the witch’s house. Someone who already loves him? He thinks of past lovers who may still carry a torch for him — the merchant in the capital, the archer at his first post, the farmer just outside of the last town he worked in — the one with the long, golden braids.

He doesn’t think that he was anything but a passing amusement for any of them, but maybe he’s wrong.

After he completes the day’s labor, he bathes and shaves his face carefully. He puts on clean linens and his finest garments.

Like a bridegroom, he thinks.

He saddles his horse, and at the last moment, he plucks a bluebell from the garden and places it under the headstall of her bridle.

He rides to the witch’s house.

He is dismounting when he sees her, standing in the soft twilight among the flowers of the front garden.

He recognizes her instantly in her gown of midnight blue silk — his soul’s truest companion.

“You can imagine my surprise,” she says, walking slowly toward him, “when I performed the summoning and the things that came to my hand were all objects from my own little house. Usually, it takes a scrying to find the one to whom I must send the seeker — perhaps I must send them on a long journey, perhaps they must master an instrument or harvest my grain and take it to a certain mill, perhaps they simply need to open themselves to possibility. So I take them into my service, and when the time is right, I put them in the path of the one their heart has longed for.”

“Is this why I have been your servant for almost a year?”

“That, and I needed some chores done, you understand.”

He laughs.

“And you’re good company,” she adds.

“Ah, well,” he says. “I’m pleased to hear it.”

“Take this,” she says, holding out her left hand, “and it is done.”

The moment his fingers touch hers, the charm unwinds itself into its individual components — an oat straw, a strand of hair, a green string, a scrap of blue silk — they float away on the breeze.

And she holds in her hand a treasure.


End file.
